


The Feeling, Itself

by lovecatcadillac



Category: Bomb Girls
Genre: F/F, Friendship/Love, Gen, Pre-Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-18
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 14:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovecatcadillac/pseuds/lovecatcadillac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate learns to look, and be looked at.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Missing scenes set between the end of _Jumping Tracks_ and the beginning of _Armistice._ This can be read as a continuation of _To Be Brave,_ although it is not necessary to read one in order to understand the other.

Kate has spent much of her time on this earth pretending to be blind. Just a week ago, in her old life, she couldn’t seem to look at anyone without incurring some dire consequences.

If she eyed a handsome man in the street – if, God forbid, their eyes met hers – her father would appear at her side to crush her hand, squeeze her forearm, drag her home and deliver a thundering lecture about how all women are base and lustful creatures. The lectures were usually in front of her mother and brothers. Thank God that Mother didn’t seem to believe that her daughter could be capable of such thoughts, although sadly, Kate’s brothers did. Towards the end, Walter and Richard could barely look at her any more. Kate couldn’t look at them either.

If her gaze fell on a pretty young woman, Kate’s breath would catch, and her heart would start to beat faster. She would long to be that woman, any other woman, anyone apart from herself. Kate always feels a towering sense of inferiority around pretty women.

See, Kate’s father is an itinerant preacher. When she was little, they moved two or three times a year. By the time she was a young teenager, Kate’s family didn’t stay in one place for longer than a month. It didn’t do much for her ability to make friends. She doesn’t have any sisters, and although she’s always been close to her mother, somehow she’s lacking a certain female influence in her life.

This is a new week and a new life. It’s not very often that someone can say that, and yet Kate has found it necessary to pretend to be blind more than once this week. She’s started working at Victory Munitions, a bomb factory in Toronto, and sometimes going blind is the only way she can get by.

It’s all about not looking, about pretending very hard that she’s blind until she can hide again. She’s had a lifetime’s practice at pretending not to see, but it’s harder to do around other people. Her family let her get on with it, whereas other people are peer at her and ask what she’s thinking about. Kate wishes they would let her alone. She doesn’t want anyone to look at her too long, or too closely. She doesn’t want them to see the things she keeps hidden.

Most of Kate’s worst scars are on her back. She knows that what she imagines is probably far worse than how they really appear, but she can’t help but feel self-conscious. Kate can’t think of a single person in the world she would willingly show them to. She even used to hate showing them to Mother.

Kate can’t stop thinking about Betty, the woman who lives across the hallway. She’s the very best worker on Blue Shift, if not in the whole factory. She’s well liked by the other workers, and thoroughly approved of by Mrs Corbett, the floor matron, who is notoriously difficult to please. She wears pants and boots. She’s never at a loss for words. She doesn’t believe in God. Betty is everything that Kate isn’t.

And yet, it seems like Betty is a few of the things that Kate is, as well. The other night, at the Sandy Shore Pavilion, Kate stood at the edge of the room for hours, unable to think how she might find a dance partner, unsure whether stolen moments of dancing alone would ever translate to real life. Betty stayed by Kate’s side, always smoking just one more cigarette or finishing the dregs of one more glass of punch. It made Kate nervous. Certainly, she wanted Betty to be there, but she worried that perhaps Betty was just being kind. Why on earth would Betty stay beside Kate, instead of whirling away in some handsome soldier’s arms?

It was only when the band started playing a slow number and Kate saw two other women dancing together that it clicked. Betty wasn’t staying around out of charity. She was afraid to get onto the dance floor as well! Kate had asked Betty to dance then and there. She even led the dance. Betty, the toughest broad at Vic Mu, had let Kate take the lead! She had looked surprised, impressed that Kate had seen a solution to their shared problem. Suddenly, Kate wasn’t afraid of doing the wrong thing any more. Neither of them was particularly great at dancing, but Betty’s hand was warm in hers, and their feet made more or less the pattern Kate envisioned. For the first time in a long time, it felt like Kate was doing something right.

From the moment Kate first saw her, she knew that she wanted to be Betty’s friend. It feels more obvious with every passing moment. She thought she had a good chance of it, only – only it seems like Betty was just being kind, after all. A couple of hours ago, Betty told Kate that she had seen her scars.

Kate doesn’t know how to feel about it. She felt afraid and ashamed when Betty first told her, followed by a good feeling when Betty promised to look out for her. She’s never been as skilled at identifying her good feelings. Perhaps that’s why they tend to get eclipsed by her bad ones so easily. As soon as she was away from Betty, her nameless good feelings were buried under all-too-familiar worries and doubts.

This is why she didn’t want anyone to know. Kate wants so much to be something other than her past. It’s all ruined now. When Betty looks at Kate, does she see Kate any more, or does she only see all the most terrible moments of Kate’s life?

She thought Betty was being kind to her for her. It turns out that Betty felt _sorry_ for her. That wonderful moment when they were dancing together, when Kate was able to take control and surprise someone else … it just feels like it’s been erased, replaced with Betty shaking her head pityingly at Kate’s poor scarred body in the showers at work. Kate cringes, thinking about how she must have looked: knock-kneed, round-shouldered, shaking like a leaf, trying desperately to cover her nakedness, showing her wounded back to the whole of Blue Shift. Betty saw it all.

 _Wounded._ It’s such an ugly word. The ugly words keep on coming. _Maimed. Disfigured._ She thinks them all without emotion. It’s only when she pictures her back and thinks, _Like a road map_ that Kate winces bodily as if she’s actually taking a blow.

She shakes her head twice, trying to clear it, and begins to sing softly, to try and banish the thoughts. “Just a closer walk with Thee. Grant it, Jesus, is my plea. Daily walking close to Thee. Let it be, dear Lord, let it be…” She trails off, unable to bring herself to sing the next verse. She wants so badly to get rid of these desolate feelings.

Kate fumbles in her bedside drawer for her mother’s locket. For a moment, her hand closes around empty air, and Kate panics. Eventually, though, her fingers graze over the cool, familiar metal. Kate snatches it up and reads the inscription hungrily. _To Marion with Love._ She holds it tightly in her hand until her hopelessness has ebbed somewhat.

When she is breathing normally again, she opens the drawer to replace the locket, and finds herself staring straight at the silk stockings Gladys Witham gave her last night, in the powder room at the Sandy Shore Pavilion. Gladys is one of the new secretaries at Victory Munitions. She started the same day as Kate. When Kate saw Gladys dropped off by a chauffeur at the gates on that first morning, looking for all the world like a movie star doing a goodwill tour of the factories, she had been devastatingly impressed - until she had seen just how many people were snickering and whispering behind Gladys’ back.

Kate thanks God for Gladys. If Gladys hadn’t started on the same day as Kate, all that scrutiny could have been directed Kate’s way. Kate might have been quiet and a tad jumpy. She might have frozen up when Archie Arnott and the other men muttered lewd comments. Kate might even have nearly blown up the factory, but at least she didn’t show up in a cloud of French perfume, making a to-do about her engagement ring before she’d even gotten in the front door. Kate falls in line, does her work and doesn’t complain. The other girls accept her. Kate is, more or less, an _us._ Poor Gladys is most definitely a _them._

Their separate statuses were cemented in the ladies’ room at the dance last night. Overcome with curiosity, Kate asked to touch Gladys’ stocking. Betty told Gladys where to go in short, sharp words, and Gladys threw the stockings at Kate before she stalked out. So, really, one might say that they belong to Kate now.

Kate has never worn silk stockings before. There’s no particular shame in that. She would wager most of the women here haven’t worn them either, at least not in the past few years. But she has also never drawn a line up the backs of her legs with an eyebrow pencil, to look like a seam. Her father wouldn’t have approved of such artifice.

Kate wants that feeling again, the one she had dancing with Betty. She wants to surprise someone, even if it’s just herself. Before she knows it, she is sitting back on the bed and rolling the stockings up, first one and then the other. It takes a moment to get the seams nice and straight, but she just about manages.

Kate can’t help but shiver a little as she runs the palm of her hand up her own calf. There it is again, that feeling she had in the ladies’ room at the Sandy Shore Pavilion. A curious feeling, in every sense of the word. This must be what it would like to be a man touching a woman’s leg, or to be a woman having her leg stroked. How strange and special, to experience it from both sides. This, she supposes, is one of the few advantages afforded to women in this life, this ability to feel a touch in more than one way.

There is a knock at the door, and a voice calls, “You in there, Kate? It’s me, Betty.”

Torn out of her reverie, Kate realises with a rush of embarrassment how ridiculous she must look, sitting on her bed and stroking her own leg with a silly grin on her face. This is why she’ll never have the door open and the curtain hanging, like the other women here do. People would be bound to barge in during all her most private moments.

“Just a minute, just a minute,” she babbles, pulling her nightgown over her head and thrusting her arms into the sleeves. She places the locket reverently back in the drawer (covering it with a couple of her cheap cotton handkerchiefs, for safety’s sake) before going to the door and opening it. “What can I do for you, Betty?”

“I thought maybe you-” Betty looks at her shoes, almost shyly. It’s rather endearing. It makes Kate remember the way she was when they danced. Then, she frowns, and Kate realises what Betty has noticed. _Oh, no._ “Are you wearing Gladys Witham’s stockings?”

“I-” Kate finds herself putting one foot behind the other, as if she’s trying to hide the evidence. “I was just trying them on. There’s nothing wrong with that. You should try them. They really do feel very soft.”

Betty’s eyebrows lift. “I’m not really up for wearing anybody’s hand-me-down lingerie. ‘Specially not that poor little rich girl Gladys.”

“Is there something I can do for you, Betty?” Kate repeats, trying to look polite and welcoming when all she wants to do is slam the door, tear off the stockings and never touch her own skin again if she can possibly help it.

“Aggie and Dolores are starting up a euchre game. Want to come join us?” Kate’s lack of recognition must be showing on her face, because Betty adds, “It’s a card game; you play in teams of two.”

“So, I’d be on your team?”

“Well, yeah.”

“I don’t think I’d be very good. I’ve never played cards in my life.”

Betty leans against the door frame, burying her hands in the pockets of her coat. If Kate did that, it would just look like she was tired and fidgety, but Betty makes it a smooth, careless gesture.

“I can teach you,” she says simply. “And if you’re shy, it’s the best way to get in with all the other women here.”

Kate bites her lip. “I’m already in my nightgown.”

“Ain’t no rule that says you can’t wear your nightgown … or your silk stockings,” says Betty, grinning. “Come on, be a sport.”

It is a very persuasive grin. Kate finds herself saying, “Oh, why not? Half a minute.” She goes to grab the key from her bedside table, so she can lock her door.

“You don’t need to do that. I told you, nobody steals here.” Betty’s tone is so deliberately casual. She thinks she’s being subtle. It makes Kate want to shake her. _Can’t you understand, I’m not worried about thieves?!_

“I don’t like people being in my room,” she says stiffly.

“I don’t much like people being in mine either.” Betty folds her arms and leans in closer to Kate. “But Aggie’s set up the chairs five feet away. Nobody’ll be able to get in your room without breezing straight past us, and they’d have to be pretty brazen for that.”

Kate hesitates. “You’ll - you’ll back me up, if anybody tries to get in?”

“Not only will we tell ‘em where to go, I will personally help you heft them through the door like potato sacks,” Betty promises.

Slowly, Kate puts down the key. “I’ll just take these off, then.” She starts to double over, to peel off the stockings.

“Oh, leave ‘em on. You’ll have them choking with envy, and it’ll put them off their game.” Betty looks over her shoulder at the sound of scraping chair legs and chatter. “Maybe they’re your lucky charm.”

So Kate ventures out into the hallway, oddly clad in her winter nightgown and Gladys’ silk stockings, to be introduced to two more of her neighbours and learn the rules of euchre. Nobody says anything about her attire, possibly because Aggie is wearing a threadbare kimono and Dolores has her hair curled up in rags.

They are rough and ready women, but quite friendly and welcoming to Kate. They speak kindly to her. Their voices get higher at the ends of sentences, like she’s someone’s kid sister here on a visit – until Kate manages to play a trump card. They curse in surprise, and for a moment Kate is afraid that they’re angry with her. She’s brought out of herself by Betty applauding loudly.

Their eyes meet across the table. “Good game,” says Betty, nodding and smiling. “You’re a natural.”

“Helps to have a good partner,” Kate replies graciously, as Dolores and Aggie grumble.

“Beginner’s luck. We’ll cream you in the next round,” says Aggie.

“Well, we’ll see.” Kate smoothes out the skirts of her nightgown. “Who’s dealing?”

They don’t win every round, but Kate still has fun. She listens more than she talks, and she’s the only one who isn’t smoking, but somehow, she doesn’t feel awkward. Every so often, when Dolores and Aggie are preoccupied with their next move and Betty is lighting up another cigarette, Kate rubs her heels around each other in slow circles, as if she’s scratching an itch. Really, she’s glorying in the feeling itself. She’s never known anything so soft before.


	2. Chapter 2

Kate is standing outside the Sandy Shore Pavilion with Betty and Gladys Witham, hugging herself against the cold. She is trying not to think about what she had to do to be standing here, but it’s no use. As the cold air helps her sober up, she can’t not think about the envelope in her purse.

Oh, those photos. She can’t believe they’re true. The first time she looked at them, in Chet’s studio, Kate caught a flash of bizarrely knowing eyes that don’t resemble her own, of long white limbs and curves she’s never felt comfortable with. What had he turned her into? What had she turned herself into?

It made her want to cry, looking at them, knowing what men would think once they saw them. Kate saw the photos for a mere second before she shoved them back in their envelope, hidden them in her purse and tried to forget about them.

Being with Betty helped for a little while, especially after they ran into Gladys and her fiancé, James, at Sandy Shores. In the wake of some extremely hectic days at work, the three women drank and talked together. Gladys has been working the floor for more than a week now. She’s woefully unaware of the way things work when you’re a floor girl, but she’s proven to be made of sterner stuff than anyone could have imagined. Kate likes her. She can admit that to herself. Betty still doesn’t trust Gladys, but even Betty couldn’t help but be impressed when Gladys pocketed a dead rat rather than fail her bomb-building test.

Gladys is insisting on James dropping Betty and Kate home. James has gone to bring the Packard around, and Gladys and Betty are bantering with each other. Kate finds it difficult to join in. She’s never been good at their kind of rapid-fire talk. She’s spent so many years accustomed to being quiet, standing on the fringes and watching other people. Right now, though, she hates it, because being quiet is only making her think about the photos again.

Men look at Kate and feel lust in their hearts, and it has always been her fault, her fault, her fault. She tempts men to sin whether she meets their eyes and smiles, or whether she stoops her shoulders and pretends to be blind and deaf. But it is one thing to make men sin in their hearts just by virtue of being female, and quite another to cavort in front of a camera, knowingly and willingly colluding with sinners…

Kate is brought out of her reverie by Gladys touching her cheek. She flinches, then relaxes, then tenses up again at Gladys’ intense expression. Gladys proclaims, “You are such a beauty, Kate. You’ve got magnificent hair, just like Rita Hayworth.”

Kate has no idea who Gladys is talking about, but guesses it must be some movie star. She has a mad urge to giggle, but keeps a straight face as she says, “Why, thank you, Gladys.”

Betty looks frankly irritated, then taken aback as Gladys turns on her. “And you! You’re another Marlene! No wonder all the soldiers want a factory girl.” Even after so many, Gladys isn’t foolhardy enough to try and touch Betty’s face.

“Why is it that girls always feel the need to tell each other they’re pretty when they’re sauced?” Betty asks loudly, looking straight at Kate as though Gladys isn’t there.

“Oh, go on,” says Gladys good-naturedly, sitting down on a low ornamental wall. In one movement, she reaches out and pulls Kate down to sit with her, so she can lean her head on Kate’s shoulder. “Lord, why can’t I stay out all night? Or forever. Forever would be just dreamy.”

“Because you’ve got work at seven sharp and you need to sleep this off,” Betty points out.

Gladys acts like she doesn’t hear. “I don’t wanna go home,” she mumbles.

Kate can’t help but worry, as she hears, in Gladys’ words, an echo of thoughts she had over and over throughout her twenty-four years of childhood. Even so, she tries to keep her shoulder slack so Gladys will be comfortable. “Gladys?”

“It’s my mother. My parents. They’re insufferable; treat me like I’m made of glass. It’s all because of Laurence. They expect me to be perfect for them. God, if they knew I was working the floor…” Gladys swings her feet in their high heels. “I’m so lucky to have James. I love him so much. And Carol. Good friends, you know? People who understand.”

Betty looks seriously worried that Gladys is going to start listing the two of them as more _good friends,_ but Gladys mumbles herself into silence. Perhaps, even in her current state, she knows that certain lines can’t be crossed just yet. Or perhaps Gladys isn’t as drunk as she’s making out, because as soon as James pulls up in the Packard, she jumps to her feet, slides into the front passenger seat and says in ringing tones, “Darling, you took an age! And yet, none of us ladies got eaten by wolves. Fancy that!”

Kate doesn’t hear James’ reply, but it makes Gladys roll her eyes heavenwards, laugh her gilded laugh, and snuggle up to him. Betty shakes her head and pointedly asks James if he minds her smoking, as if to remind the love-birds that there are other people in the car.

Kate is wrong-footed by the abrupt change in Gladys’ demeanour. One moment, Gladys was using Kate as a pillow, mumbling about her demanding, controlling parents. The next, she’s all sparkling social graces again. It’s startling, sometimes, the difference between how people seem and what they’re thinking. Kate stares wonderingly out the darkened window and finds herself meeting her own eyes in the glass.

She is starting to appear a little more like how Kate Andrews ought to look. Not a Marion Rowley, relying on her mother’s strength to get by. Not a temptress with glittering eyes, intent on leading men to sin. Just a factory girl on a night out with friends, a pretty young woman with hopeful eyes and yes, a beautiful head of hair. And maybe it’s the drinks she’s had, gallantly provided by Gladys’ indulgent fiancé, but her curiosity gets the better of her. Kate takes the envelope out of her purse.

She inches one of the photos out of the envelope, just enough to be able to see her own face, and studies it. It feels all right, as long as she doesn’t look any further down than her shoulders. She’s laughing in the picture, at some joke Betty made at Chet’s expense. Kate’s only ever had a handful of photos taken. Mostly stiff family portraits, although she does remember a lovely one she and her brother Richard got taken at a fair about ten years ago, against a backdrop of a paper moon. As far as Kate can remember, this is the first photo she’s ever had where she’s laughing.

If only she wasn’t wearing such a shocking bathing suit, she’d send it home to her mother. Well, she would if her family had a single postal address … or if she was in a position to be able to send letters and photos home to her family. _What if I never see them again,_ she thinks, and she can’t even make it a question inside her head, because she knows it’s very, very likely that she never will.

Kate grits her teeth and shakes her head against the unwelcome thought. She can’t think about everything she’s missing, can’t think about they wouldn’t take her back ever again if they knew the kinds of things she’s done…

“Kate?”

She realises with a jolt that Betty is looking right at her. Gladys’ head stirs on James’ shoulder, and she turns to look around at Kate. “Are you all right?” asks Gladys. “You look flustered.”

 _“I look flustered because you’re staring at me like that,”_ Kate wants to snap. Instead, she says, “I just have a headache, that’s all.”

“Some fresh air’ll cure that,” says Betty. “James, let us out at this next corner, we’ll walk the last couple of blocks.”

“You’re the boss.” James shrugs and prepares to pull over.

“Oh, are you sure?” Gladys pouts. “I wanted to see where you live.”

Betty doesn’t bother hiding her look of annoyance. “Quite sure, princess.”

They clamber out of the car, thanking James for the lift, and stand together on the pavement, watching the Packard’s tail lights fade into the night.

Betty breaks the silence. “Good thinking there, faking a headache. I’m not so sure I want Gladys Witham to know my address.”

Kate nods, feeling disloyal to Gladys but glad that the subject has been steered away from her obvious discomfort in the car.

They begin the walk back to the rooming house. Betty, who can handle a lot more liquor than Kate or Gladys, doesn’t show any signs of being drunk, except for the fact that she’s walking quite close to Kate. The sleeves of their winter coats brush together. Kate doesn’t mind. It feels cosy. It gives her something else to concentrate on.

Neither one of them speaks until the rooming house comes into view. Kate is just noting that there are still quite a few lights on when Betty ventures, “I saw you looking at the pictures when we were in James’ car.”

Kate avoids Betty’s gaze, but nods and breathes, “Yes…” What’s the point in lying about it? Betty was there when they were being taken, after all.

“You still angry?”

“Not with you, no,” Kate says. She hesitates, and then continues, “I don’t know how I feel about them.”

She knows a little about how she feels, but she can’t say so. The fact is it didn’t feel like filth, to move and pose with her eyes trained on Betty’s. It had been almost fun, in way: Betty nodding encouragingly at Kate, saying “Yes” and “Good,” suggesting ways for her to stand, demonstrating them in her own way and beaming at Kate’s interpretations. She looked at Kate like she was impressed at her daring. Like Kate was something really special. If only Chet hadn’t been there, it could have been all fun.

It is wicked to think any such thing. Kate finds herself voicing one tiny snippet of what she’s thinking. “What on earth does that say about me? That I … did that. I’m so glad that I’m going to be able to stay, but I keep thinking I should have turned and run as soon as he told me what he wanted, even if it meant going back…”

Betty clears her throat. “Kate, from where I’m standing, I don’t give a damn what you had to do to get those papers. What’s important to me is that you get to stick around here, where it’s safe for you. You’re still the same girl to me. I’m proud to know you, no matter what.”

Kate is suddenly flooded by a feeling almost like an attack of blushing, except she can feel it all through her. She is so relieved that Betty doesn’t see her as tainted by the experience. She didn’t realise how important that was to her, until now.

Sometimes it’s a little frightening, to like Betty so much even though they haven’t known each other very long. Thank goodness Betty seems to feel the same way about her. But again, it confuses Kate, because she doesn’t have a frame of reference for feeling so close to someone outside her family. Perhaps Betty is the older sister Kate used to long for as a child, born to another set of parents and finally sent to cross paths with Kate after twenty-four unbearably lonely years?

No, that can’t be it. Betty doesn’t behave like an older sister. Any older sister of Kate’s would never have accompanied her into a pornographer’s den, talked her through the wretchedness she felt. As Kate grew up, her pretend big sister turned into yet another person to judge her and find her wanting. The only sister Kate has been able to imagine for some years now would invariably be miles away while Kate shivered in that shocking bathing suit. She would be at home with Mother and Father and the boys, shaking her head over Kate’s folly. Or else, she would have walked out like Kate did, abandoning her loving family and never looking back…

She can’t think like that, not now. Kate doesn’t need her pretend big sister any more. Maybe she never needed one. Because whatever Betty is, it’s certainly not an older sister. She is strong, and she is protective, but she is never patronising, never taken aback by Kate and her scars and her murky past. Kate feels stronger just being around her. In fact, as they step through the front door and begin removing their coats, she feels just strong enough to ask, “Betty, would you do something for me?”

“What?”

“Would you look at them with me?”

Betty pauses. “You mean the photos?”

Kate nods. “I think I’d feel less scared, to have someone with me. And I wouldn’t usually ask anyone to look at that sort of thing, but well … you have seen them before, in a way, haven’t you?”

So, like two prankish schoolgirls, they stand in a corner of the front hallway and huddle over the envelope. Kate slides out the sheaf of photos, and Betty begins shuffling through them. Kate barely looks at the pictures, she’s too busy watching Betty’s face. Betty does a remarkable job of keeping her face absolutely impassive. It takes her slightly too long to have any kind of reaction, and Kate begins to panic again, thinking, _It’s because it’s dawning on her, she’s only just realising how bad it really is-_

Betty holds up the one Kate was looking at before, the one where she’s laughing. “This one’s my favourite.”

Kate wasn’t expecting that. “You really like it?”

“‘Course I do,” says Betty. Somehow it feels even better than being compared to Rita Hayworth, that phantom arbiter of beauty who Kate can only assume also has red hair. She dares to beam at Betty, and Betty smiles back.

The spell is broken as Moira and Jeannie come out of the kitchen carrying cups of tea. Kate squeaks, jumps a foot in the air and snatches the photos away from Betty, holding them protectively to her chest. Caught off guard, Moira splashes the floorboards and the toes of her special slippers with hot camomile.

Betty promptly dissolves into laughter, and when Jeannie and Moira throw their hands up in exasperation, Kate can’t help but see the funny side too. They laugh and laugh, even after Jeannie and Moira have swept up the stairs to bed.

“Shall we continue this up in my room?” asks Betty. “I know we’ve gotta be up at six, but it’s only ten. I could stand to sit up awhile longer.”

“All right,” says Kate, taking Betty’s hand. It’s the first time she’s ever volunteered affection with someone outside her family. Kate leads the way upstairs, her envelope of glamour photos in one hand and her friend in the other.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s close to two in the morning. Betty and Kate, the last two awake, are resigned to cleaning up the aftermath of the euchre party. They weave their way through the hallway, picking up glasses and ashtrays and piling them on sideboards. Kate can’t stop thinking about something Gladys said, a few hours ago. 

As Kate sat holding her hand, Gladys said hollowly, “I met James just after my brother Laurence died. I used to wonder, ‘How can I possibly be this happy, when Laurence hasn’t been gone four months?’ And now … now that it’s all changed, all I can think is that I wish Laurie were here. I can’t stop thinking that this happened because I didn’t mourn him enough. Like I’m being punished.”

Kate spoke from her heart. “I’ve got two brothers, Gladys. Richie and Walt.” ( _Richard and Walter._ The Rowleys are not the sort of people who give pet names, but it’s always been one of the only rebellions Kate allowed herself, to call them by friendly nicknames inside her head.) “It was the hardest thing in the world to walk away from them, but I knew I had to do it. Do you know why? It’s because we have to trust that God wants us to be happy,” Kate told Gladys firmly. It’s something she’s been trying to tell herself ever since she left her family. Sometimes it’s hard to make herself believe it, but right then, watching Gladys teeter on the verge of tears for hour after hour, it seemed like the truest thing in the world. “He would never punish you for finding happiness, especially after you lost your brother.”

Gladys Witham is Kate and Betty’s friend now. It still seems a little odd sometimes, the idea of being friends with someone who moves through an entirely different world to women like Kate and Betty – but perhaps the time for staying still and accepting realities is done. After all, if Kate can change her life for the better, why not Gladys? She tried explaining as much to Gladys, when the dancing wound down and she had discovered Gladys in the corner, trying her utmost not to cry. Betty’s tactics for dealing with Gladys’ broken heart were rather less hands-on. She plied Gladys with drinks, sent death glares at anyone gawping at her, and prevented Phyllis and Susan from playing anything too sad on Moira’s Victrola. Kate isn’t sure how helpful they were, but twenty minutes ago, as Gladys’ taxi pulled away into the night, she mouthed her thanks at them and gave them a brave little wave out the back window.

All of a sudden, Kate spies something crumpled between the legs of a chair. “Oh, dear, Gladys forgot her wrap.” She holds the magnificent fur in her hands, feeling its weight and remembering how small Gladys looked after she had taken it off.

“More like she left it deliberately. I’d say you can probably keep it.” Betty pats the fur wrap like a disobedient kitten, making a face at how impossibly soft it is. “God, you make out like a bandit, being around Gladys. She’s certainly keeping you in silks and furs.”

“Leave her alone, Betty. She’s all right,” says Kate sternly. “Surely you know that now, after the suggestion box and everything that happened. Maybe she’s not like us, but she’s one of my best friends here, after you. I’m glad she came over.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Betty speaks again. “It was brave of her to come out tonight. If - if the one I was with stepped out on me, I’d probably lock myself in my room, down a bottle of whiskey and play _Gloomy Sunday_ on repeat.” She says it all in a touchingly earnest rush, with only the occasional hiss on an S betraying the fact that she, like everyone who attended the party and particularly those who were keeping Gladys company, has had rather a lot to drink.

“ _Gloomy Sunday_?”

“Another Billie song. A word to the wise: don’t ever listen to it when you’re already sad. It’s brutal.”

Kate realises that this is the first time, ever, that Betty has made any reference to how she might behave with a boyfriend. She wonders, all at once, whether Betty’s been jilted before. Or maybe she’s the same as Kate; maybe she hasn’t ever had a boyfriend. Kate has trouble imagining Betty hanging on a man’s arm. She has even more difficulty imagining Betty winding her arms around some man’s neck and pressing her mouth to his.

Kate blushes as she’s assailed by a barrage of very uncomfortable mental images. She feels like a film projector in her brain is beaming what she’s thinking right onto her forehead. Any moment now, Betty’s going to frown, lean forward and gasp, _“Oh, Kate, is it true?”_

Sometimes it feels so blatantly obvious that Kate hasn’t had any real friends in years that she wonders how Gladys and Betty can stand to be seen with her. If only she had had a normal childhood and adolescence – tripping off to the same schoolhouse and church every week, going to parties and pictures and dances, getting her first job in a shop or office at sixteen – she wouldn’t do such weird things like picturing her best friend in a clinch with some anonymous stranger. She would be like all the normal girls.

Thank goodness for Gladys and Betty, because they’re not normal girls either. It’s less obvious with Gladys, whose beauty and breeding is like a glare that makes people shade their eyes or even turn away. Betty wards off scrutiny with her sense of purpose, her air of unflappability, of supreme confidence. But all three of them want something real, and they’re scared, so scared that they might never get it. Kate, Betty and Gladys all want to be taken seriously, to be part of the world on their own terms. And Kate is realising, day by day, that all of them want to be loved, too. Loved for themselves.

It’s something Kate’s never allowed herself to think about too deeply. She knows she’ll be married someday, of course, but she didn’t like to dream or make plans about it. When she was under her father’s thumb, it seemed impossible.

It’s par for the course, trying her hardest not to think about how much she wants to be treated romantically, but suddenly, Kate can hardly stand the idea that her two best friends have been ill-treated by men they loved. Kate wants so much to grab Betty’s hand and say, _“You know, you could get anyone you wanted. You wouldn’t have to change a thing. Any man would want you, even if you don’t act like a lady. Even if you wore your pants forever and a day, smoked in the house, made smutty jokes and all the rest of it, they’d be crazy not to want you to be their girl. If I were a man, I’d never step out on you.”_

But she can’t. It sounds so funny. Who is Kate to be thinking of how she’d treat women if she were a man?

Betty surveys the hallway, which is now free of breakables and safe for the rooming house women to stumble down half-asleep and hung over. “I guess I’ll be hitting the hay now.”

“Why, are you sleepy?”

“I might not go to bed for a bit. Why do you ask?”

“I just thought … you could come to my room, if you like.”

Betty gives a shrug, but she’s smiling. “Well, if you insist.”

“Welcome to my lovely abode,” jokes Kate as she shows Betty in. There’s this weird sense of anticipation that she can’t put her finger on. Why does she feel so keyed-up and strange, having Betty in her room? They’ve been in each other’s rooms lots of times.

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Betty stands in the middle of the room, rocking back and forth on her heels, as Kate closes the door. “So, what do you feel like doing?”

She’s never asked that before. Usually, she comes in, sits down immediately and lights up a cigarette. Perhaps she’s picked up on the strange atmosphere too.

“Whatever you want to do, Betty.” Kate realises how wishy-washy she sounds. “I thought we might just talk together for awhile.” She gestures to the bed. “Make yourself comfy.”

They seat themselves on Kate’s bed, facing each other. “Shoes, Betty,” Kate reminds her, grabbing a pillow and placing it next to Betty as Betty pulls off her shoes, without untying the laces, and drops them to the floor.

“Some party,” Betty comments after a moment’s quiet.

“Some party,” Kate agrees. “I’m glad we could be there for Gladys.”

“Yeah. She’s not so bad, old Gladys. In small doses.”

“Goodness, you sound ready to pop the question,” Kate teases her. “Should I be jealous?”

Betty stiffens abruptly and begins hunting through her pockets for her cigarettes. Kate regrets her joke immediately. She wants to apologise, to swear that she didn’t mean it to sound so funny, but that would just make it more awkward.

“Betty?” she ventures timidly.

“Hmm?” Betty has located her cigarettes, but seems to have mislaid her matches. Kate watches as she puts the cigarettes aside in defeat before reconsidering and turning out her pockets. Betty seems very intent on not meeting Kate’s eyes.

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

Kate hesitates. “Did you ... always want to work in a factory?”

Betty finally looks up. She laughs, recognising Kate’s awkward attempt at lightening the mood. It sounds like she’s been holding it in for longer than they’ve been in the room.

“Well, I was hardly ticking off the days on my calendar, waiting for a war to begin so I could make bombs. I saw the ad in the paper, same as you.” _Same as Mother,_ thinks Kate, who never actually saw the advertisement herself, but was informed about it after Mother had secretly sent in an application on her behalf. “But yeah, I like it on the floor at Vic Mu. I’m not really cut out to be a secretary or a shopgirl.”

“I never thought I’d be able to do anything like this. I don’t mean just working in a factory, but … all of it. Living away from home, working with my hands, just sitting here talking to you. I thought I’d always just be stuck. Even when Mother and I started planning that I should leave someday, for the longest time I thought she’d be coming with me. I nearly changed my mind when I realised I’d be on my own. I never even thought...”

The corners of Betty’s mouth lift in a smile. “Feels good, doesn’t it? To surprise yourself.”

“Definitely,” Kate agrees. She shifts a little on the bed, to make herself more comfortable, and goes on, “Did you always want to do a sort of more … well, a man’s job?”

“You’re forgetting I grew up on a farm. On a farm, there isn’t much that needs doing that isn’t usually a man’s job. I just feel comfortable that way.” Betty thinks for a moment before chuckling ruefully. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be an acrobat or a bareback rider. Or both. You know, for the job security.”

Kate can see it so clearly: Betty as a skinny ten-year-old, her grass-stained frock dangling into her face as she performs a handstand on the back of a patient cow. She laughs in delight. “And how did that go?”

“I balked at wearing tights and a tiara for a living. My folks didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. They knew it was about the girliest thing I’d ever consider doing, probably the only chance of me turning out graceful.”

Before Kate quite knows what she’s saying, the question tumbles out of her. “Betty, have you ever had a beau?”

“Nope.” Betty says it with a practiced casualness. “I was an old maid by the time I was sixteen.”

Kate nods, her suspicions confirmed. “I’ve never had a boyfriend either.”

“Well. I had one once, I think.”

“Oh?” Kate asks.

“I don’t know. Does it count if you’re all of fourteen and it only lasts a week?”

Kate can’t stop a giggle from escaping. “I’m sorry, I’m tipsy. I didn’t mean to laugh, I swear.”

Betty smirks, but it’s a fond sort of smirk. She rearranges herself to sit cross-legged. “That’s all right, I forgive you. I’m not quite so thin-skinned that I’ll boohoo if you rib me about my one-week romance from fourteen years ago.”

“Anyway, I’m hardly an expert.” Kate can’t help but ask, “Why only a week?”

Betty looks hard at her. “I told my folks he tried to take liberties. My mom sent my brother Joe, the oldest, to tell him not to come around again. Maybe he did take liberties, I don’t know. He might’ve been a perfect gentleman. It all feels strange when you’re that young and you’ve never been felt up before. Truth was, I just didn’t like kissing him.”

“Sounds like you were a smart girl,” Kate says. “You have to - to like kissing them, otherwise it couldn’t work.”

They look at each other. Kate is suddenly hyper-aware that Betty’s knee is touching hers, so gently. Who is she to be dispensing advice? Kate’s never kissed anyone in her life.

“Yeah,” says Betty softly. Her eyes flicker briefly to Kate’s mouth, appraising it, taking it in, the most obviously unkissed mouth in all of the rooming house, all of Victory Munitions, all of Toronto, Canada, the world. Betty has been kissed, even if she didn’t enjoy it. Kate wonders what the boy thought about it.

And just like that, Kate gets the feeling again. It’s a feeling she’s had before, on and off, since she was in her teens, usually when she was stressed and in close proximity to a beautiful young woman. It’s this powerful, rushing feeling of _wanting_ … wanting to move into a woman’s space, lock her arms around them and do something completely inappropriate like nuzzle the place where their neck and shoulder meet. Kate’s had so few meaningful relationships with people outside her family that it hasn’t happened very often, but she does recognise it to a painful degree. It’s a feeling of wanting so badly to be close to someone and knowing that she just can’t.

But she’s not stressed, just a little tipsy. Betty is Kate’s very best friend, not some anonymous woman who’s given Kate directions when she was lost in the rain, or cut her a break when she couldn’t come up with enough change for groceries. Suddenly, all of Kate’s good intentions to reassure Betty are lost in a wave of confusion and anger. Yes, anger, the thing she’s never been allowed, but it’s directed inward, so Kate lets herself keep feeling it.

She moves backward, increasing the space between them so she won’t do anything stupid. “I think I’d like to go to sleep now, Betty.” Her voice is firm, but gentle. After all, she’s not angry with Betty. Betty’s not the one who’s scarred for life.

Betty blinks, taken aback by Kate’s sudden change in demeanour. Kate hates to push her away. Kate needs to push her away. “Oh. Oh, sure. I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Sure thing.” She tries to use her eyes to tell Betty that it’s all right, that she’s not mad, that this is just for self-preservation, but it’s plain to see that the message doesn’t get through. Betty leaves in such a hurry that she forgets both her shoes.

The door shuts and Kate is alone with her thoughts. Kate doesn’t want to be this way any more. Betty is so important to her, but how can she know if it’s a true friendship when she keeps having those desperate, cloying, wanting feelings she remembers from her life before?


	4. Chapter 4

Filming a newsreel is surprisingly gruelling, but so much fun that Kate doesn’t mind a bit about giving up her Sunday. (Although she did feel a little odd about not attending church.) After they filmed the scene on the cordite line, some of the other Blue Shift extras hung about to watch. Eventually, they departed of their own accord, bored with the film making process and mumbling about getting home to their kids or going out to the pictures. Gladys and Kate are the last two left.

Truth be told, Kate is so tuckered out that she _might_ be tempted to slip out too, except for the fact that she’s the leading lady’s biggest fan. Betty has been chosen to star as the Victory Munitions Girl in Russell Joseph’s newsreel, and Kate is so proud she feels ready to burst. The world is finally going to see Betty the way that Kate does. How could she not stay around to watch every minute of the glorious process?

Filming at the factory is finished, but there’s one more location to visit. Mr Joseph and the film crew are almost finished packing up the equipment, and Gladys is prepping Betty for her next costume change.

“We’ll redo your hair and makeup at the next location, but you might as well change now,” says Gladys, handing Betty a neatly folded dress and another pair of heels. “I think this one will look splendid on you, but let me know if it doesn’t suit, because I’ve got a spare.”

“You’re so organised,” Kate compliments her. “You’ve got everything worked out ahead of time.”

“That’s why I’m on the crew,” Gladys says proudly. “Betty’s job, as the star, is to stand around and look beautiful. Mine is to see that everything runs smoothly, threaten people if it doesn’t, and fend off Mr Two-First-Names.”

“So basically, I’m you, and you’re me,” Betty teases her. “All right, I’ll be back in half a tick.” She teeters as she takes the corner in her sky-high heels, and curses in embarrassment. Kate wants to laugh, but not in a cruel way. Kate wants to run after Betty, wrap her arm around Betty’s waist and tell her she’s doing a terrific job. But she doesn’t. She stays by Gladys. The way she feels around Gladys is warm and comfortable and much less confusing.

“You’re a wonderful wardrobe mistress,” Kate tells Gladys. Gladys has been here since the small hours of the morning, organising costumes, doing hair and makeup, even giving fancy manicures to the women whose hands will show up on camera.

“Thanks. It’s been fun, being part of a film crew, though Mother would have a conniption if I ran away to Hollywood to become the next Edith Head.” Gladys pretends to consider it. “Goodness, what on earth am I waiting for?”

“As tempting as it sounds for you, we’d all miss you too much if you went away.”

“I’d miss you too. But I’d fly you, Betty and Carol down by private plane every weekend, so it wouldn’t be too much of a problem.” Gladys thinks for a moment. “Although on second thoughts, two private planes would probably work better. Carol has to breathe into a brown paper bag when she’s flying, and I don’t think Betty would be terribly sympathetic.”

Gladys is conspicuously failing to mention James. Kate pats her arm and says, “You’re welcome to come back to the rooming house for a drink after the canteen dance. I have a new Ella record I’m dying to play for you, and Betty bought a bottle of Scotch especially. She says she got the good stuff.” Actually, when Kate mentioned that she was inviting Gladys, Betty rolled her eyes and said, _“We’d better splash out on some high-end booze, then, since Princess Gladys is used to the finer things in life. Ain’t nobody gonna say we don’t get smashed in style.”_ Betty smiled when she said it, though.

Gladys smiles too. “You’re a gem, Kate Andrews. You and Betty both.”

“Well, we’re always glad to have you.” Kate looks down at her white overall. “I’d better go change too. I’ll see you outside.”

The locker room feels bigger when it’s not filled with chattering Blue Shift workers. Betty has laid out her next costume on one of the benches and is looking dubiously at herself in one of the mirrors.

“Hello!” says Kate brightly, as she hurries in. “Aren’t you changed yet?”

“I was just thinking.” Betty doesn’t volunteer any more information, just sits down on the bench beside her next costume and gazes at Kate.

“Isn’t it exciting? Whoever thought we’d get to play at being movie stars!” Kate gushes as she undoes her turban.

“Yeah, definitely. My mother will be thrilled,” says Betty, in a way that suggests that she personally feels precisely the opposite. “I can just hear her now.” She puts on a high-pitched voice. “‘See, Betty, you don’t _have_ to walk around looking so plain all the time. We’ll never get you married off if people can’t tell you apart from your brothers!’”

Kate looks at Betty, really looks at her. She thinks about the way Betty is when they’re walking to catch the street car at the end of a shift. At the end of a day’s work, Betty’s hair is mussed and needs setting, though there’s a little strand that goes straight upward whether Betty’s set her hair or not. Betty doesn’t wear makeup to work, aside from a peremptory swipe of lipstick. She’ll bemoan her latest batch of trainees, exasperation driving lines across her forehead. Kate always listens gladly to Betty’s griping, because the reward for providing an ear is usually Betty threading her arm through the crook of Kate’s elbow, and the two of them walking to their stop cosily linked, warming each other against the winter winds.

Betty’s the best friend Kate’s ever had, and she’s so lovely – to look at, to be around – it makes Kate hurt a little on the inside. If Kate were blind, she could never mistake Betty for a man.

She doesn’t know if all girls feel like this around their friends, whether other girls just notice and notice until it hurts. She can’t ask anyone else about it, in case it turns out she’s the only one with this feeling. Kate doesn’t know what she’ll do if it comes to light that she’s not really like all the other girls, if it turns out that her life with her family scarred her too deeply for her to ever be comfortable around other people. What if it turns out that the reason she notices Betty so much, admires her so much, is because she’ll never get over those feelings of shame and inferiority? She couldn’t stand for her friendship with Betty to be tarnished like that.

Only it seems now that she’s been thinking too much of her own feelings and not enough about Betty’s. _Go on, tell her you think she’s pretty,_ says the bossy voice in her head that Kate used to pretend was her older sister. _She needs to hear it, and you need to say it. If you just say it, then it won’t feel so awkward, noticing all the time. You’re acting like it’s a dirty secret, but all women think their friends are pretty, it’s not just you. You and Gladys are always complimenting each other. Betty’s said as much about you plenty of times, and each time you just stayed quiet, until the day when she happens to look totally different. No wonder she’s hurt. Imagine how you’d feel! You’ve just made it worse, she probably thinks you don’t like the way she looks either._

“... I don’t think you’re plain,” Kate finds herself murmuring. Her voice is barely more than a whisper, and it exasperates her. She should be able to just _say_ it, like she does to Gladys.

Betty smiles the slightest bit, but nervously, like she’s wondering if that’s all Kate is going to say.

Kate tries to stand taller. “Of course, I think you look great today, all made up like this, but it’s not as if I-” She has to pause, to recollect herself. Why is this so hard? “I thought you were pretty the very first time we met. When we first met, I felt like a real idiot in front of you – the door, and everything – so I must’ve thought you were _really_ pretty, to be able to notice when I was so embarrassed.” Kate gets bold, she gets reckless, and so she says, “Just because everyone noticed you today doesn’t mean you’re not pretty the rest of the time. As a matter of fact, I think you’re beautiful.”

Betty stares at Kate before clearing her throat and ducking her head. _I made her blush,_ thinks Kate in surprise. This is so much better than stuttering and stumbling over her words, so much better than worrying that any minute now, Betty’s stare will last a little too long and she’ll say disbelievingly, _“That’s not how women think about their friends, Kate.”_

“Well.” Betty rubs the back of her neck. “Maybe I will try and steal this lipstick from Gladys. You know, if you think it works on me.”

“I do.” After another pause, Kate teases, “Although ‘borrow’ might be a better word.”

“Good thinking,” says Betty, tapping the side of her nose. “All right, no more stalling. I’d better get changed.”

Betty takes off her own turban with a confident, almost theatrical flourish and begins briskly unbuttoning her shirt. Kate knows that this is the cue for her to start changing too, for them to continue their conversation as if nothing is happening, the way they do when they’re changing after work. They’ve changed – even showered – near each other dozens of times now, but it’s always been amidst a crowd of other Blue Shift workers. Alone with Betty, Kate suddenly feels acutely, ridiculously shy.

“What’s up?” asks Betty. Kate realises she’s standing with her hands frozen on her own top button, staring into space. Betty’s half out of her shirt, but that’s not what’s bothering Kate. Betty looks fine. Her body is perfectly normal, perfectly lovely. She doesn’t have anything to be ashamed of. Betty’s body doesn’t tell her secrets of its own accord.

Kate knows full well that Betty has seen her scars already. The scars are mostly on her back, so all she’d have to do would be to face Betty the whole time she’s changing, but God help her, the scars aren’t all that Kate’s concerned about.

“I...” Kate trails off, shrugging helplessly. _Just leave, just turn around and leave,_ her mind is yelling at her. _You’re useless. You can’t do anything. What’s wrong with you? You’ll never change. You’ll never get any better._

Betty holds her shirt closed with one hand, which helps matters slightly. It’s no wonder Kate notices her so much. She never had a sister, and she hasn’t had any real friends since she was a little girl. She’s never had anyone to compare herself with. Now, a whole lifetime’s worth of comparison is swamping Kate, all at once.

Kate has awful, red, raised scars, Betty doesn’t. Betty is so pretty, whether in pants and boots, a dress and heels, a white work overall and turban, whereas Kate … well, Kate just doesn’t know. Sometimes she feels pretty, when she and Betty are standing side by side watching the dancers at the Sandy Shore Pavilion, wearing fresh dresses and drinking punch and laughing. Sometimes – like now, with Betty half-dressed and unselfconscious, and Kate dreading showing even an inch of skin – Kate feels so ugly she would cheerfully wear the same dress for the rest of her life if it meant she could be sure no-one would ever see her.

Betty cocks her head to one side. “You feeling bashful?”

Kate nods, feeling hopeless. It’s idiotic how she can come so far and be suddenly defeated by little things like undressing in front of her best friend. All the reasons she doesn’t want to jumble together inside her until she can barely extricate them from one another. It’s her upbringing, all those years of changing under a nightdress in case the sight of her body inflamed her little brothers’ lower instincts. It’s her scars, the irrefutable proof that she doesn’t come from a nice, normal family, the tangible evidence that she kept being bad and getting punished until eventually, it was easier just to run away than to keep taking the punishments. It’s her body, the body she’s never felt comfortable in, even though she’s twenty-four and really ought to be used to being a woman by now.

Wordlessly, Betty turns her back towards Kate and resumes undressing in the same businesslike way. After a moment, she says, “I grew up in a tiny house full of men. My brothers used to see me change all the time, right up until I was grown up. Still, you wouldn’t believe how nervous I was about getting in the shower in front of Mrs Corbett and everybody, my first day here. It took me far longer to strip off than you did at the end of your first shift. You’ve got some moxie, Kate, even if people don’t always see it.”

 _I love you,_ thinks Kate, so serenely that she can’t muster the energy to be flustered at feeling so much for someone she’s known for barely two months. She doesn’t know whether it’s right or proper to love someone who isn’t family, who certainly doesn’t _act_ like family (Kate’s pretend older sister would never undress around men, not even her own brothers), but right now, she can’t bring herself to care. She just loves Betty. Pure and true, plain and simple. Being around her makes Kate’s life better. Why would you question a feeling like that?

When they are both dressed again, they regard each other. Gladys has struck gold again in her costume choices. Betty looks sensational, and Kate definitely _notices,_ but somehow it doesn’t hurt as much now. Not now that she loves her.

Kate resists the urge to compliment the dress, in case it sounds like she’s going back on what she just said. Luckily, Betty speaks first. “This really isn’t my bag, you know. Dressing up, acting. I was crazy to say yes.”

“But you’re doing so well! Just think what it’ll mean when some eighteen-year-old prairie girl walks in for her first training shift, and her mouth falls open and she says, ‘Golly, you’re Betty the bomb girl! I put in my job application because I want to be just like you.’”

Betty chuckles. “I guess I could stand that, as long as I don’t have to sign autographs.”

Kate beams at her. “Attagirl! That’s my Betty.”

They reach for each other’s hands at the same time as they leave the locker room, and hurry outside with their arms swinging like little girls. Gladys (clutching her makeup box), Mr Joseph and the film crew are waiting for them outside the factory. “Get a move on, Killer! We’re losin’ light!” shouts Mr Joseph, jabbing his thumb at the car.

“Hold your horses, Russell. It’s two in the afternoon, even Toronto in winter’s not that bad,” Betty retorts. Opening the car door, she motions grandly for Kate to climb in first. It makes Mr Joseph raise his eyebrows. Kate can’t help but giggle. _I bet he’s never had a leading lady like Betty,_ she thinks.

They drive out of the centre of town and into the leafy suburbs, to film the next segment. Kate thinks about how easy it ended up being, telling Betty how pretty she is, taking off her dress near her. She thinks about making Betty blush, about surprising her, about taking charge. She thinks about how she loves Betty – how grand it feels to love somebody in such a warm, uncomplicated way, without it being clouded by any guilt or fear. She’s never felt this way before. It gives her hope for the future. Someday, Kate won’t be frightened about what her best friend thinks about her scars, about her body. She won’t be assailed by those hopeless _noticing_ feelings whenever she and Betty get too close.

She’s not quite ready yet, but she will be soon. The thought cheers her, and she links her arm with Betty’s, watching the bare winter trees race by outside the car window.


	5. Chapter 5

Kate’s been thinking a lot about it, recently. About looking, and being looked at. About being ready.

Today, in the locker room after work, Kate read a little of one of Lewis Pine’s letters to Gladys. Most of the aching therein was for a decent meal, but the close included the line, “I dream of holding you in my arms; to once again kiss your neck and feel you move against me.” She’s been thinking about it ever since.

Kate is starting to be able to piece it together a little better. She’s not stupid, she knows that her reaction to the line probably means that deep down, she’d like someone to hold her close and kiss her neck. She knows it would probably feel good, with the right person. But as soon as she pictures it too clearly, she starts thinking _dirty_ and _wrong_ until she can’t remember why it sounded like an attractive idea in the first place. She still can’t let herself think about wanting to be touched and held and kissed.

Still, she can’t lose heart. She’s improving, she definitely is, in all sorts of ways. The other day, in the canteen line, Edith looked her up and down and remarked, “Kate, did you grow?”

“Pardon?” Kate asked. Then, because she couldn’t resist, she echoed, “Did I _grow_?”

“I swear you weren’t this tall when you started here, but if you’ll forgive the observation, you seem a little old for a growth spurt.”

“I think my posture’s getting better,” Kate said truthfully.

“Well, I’m glad to see it. I’m forever having to remind my Daphne to stand up straight.”

Everyone had launched into a discussion of young girls they knew – daughters, younger sisters, nieces, babysitting charges – and the never-ending battle to correct their posture. Kate had just silently revelled in the fact that someone had _seen,_ someone had noticed that she was getting better. She doesn’t mind being looked at like that. In fact, she rather likes it.

She likes it so much that she’s been doing it more and more herself. Last week, before the screening of Betty’s newsreel, she and Betty had been putting on their make-up together in Betty’s room. Kate felt so comfortable that she grew bold. “Your beauty spot is so pretty. Would you draw one on me?” Kate held out her eyebrow pencil.

Betty raised her eyebrows. “You mean my mole?”

“Yes, your beauty spot,” Kate corrected her, gently but insistently.

The corner of Betty’s mouth twitched. She sighed, but it was the sort of sigh you do when you’re trying not to grin. “I warn you, I’m not much of an artist, but I guess drawing a mole can’t be that hard. Hold still.”

When Betty leaned close to her to draw on the beauty spot, Kate got that feeling again. The wanting-to-be-close feeling. But this time, she didn’t abruptly halt the conversation and tell Betty to leave the room. She just breathed through it. Well. She breathed, and then she started humming along to the song she was singing in her head: _Night and day, you are the one. Only you, beneath the moon and under the sun…_

Once Betty had finished, Kate looked at herself in the mirror and made a face. “I think I prefer seeing it on you to having it on me,” she admitted, and wiped it off. That’s another way that she’s improving. She can just say, all straight out, that she likes looking at Betty, without worrying about how funny it sounds. Kate can just say, “Oh, Betty, I like your hair that way” or chip into a discussion about diets with, “Some people never need to slim. Like Betty, she’s got such a nice figure.” Maybe not all women feel this way about their friends, but that’s not the point any more. Kate _does_ feel this way about her friend. Betty makes her happy, after so many years of being desperately unhappy. Anyone who thinks that sounds funny can go jump. Love is very liberating that way.

She loves Betty, but she can’t tell her that. Not yet, anyway. She doesn’t quite know how to define it yet, this love which is more than friendship but definitely not like a sister. She needs to be able to define it before she can decide what to do with it.

Like with Leon, for instance. Leon Riley is a Negro janitor at Vic Mu who’s been giving her tips about singing. She likes Leon, trusts him. She didn’t realise how important it was to her, to be able to really, truly trust a man, until she met Leon. Leon’s so patient with her. He didn’t make her feel bad when she realised just how much she doesn’t know about singing. Kate feels warm inside when she looks at him, or listens to him sing. Particularly when he sings. Leon is a wonderful performer. When his band played at the canteen dance, she swayed alone in front of the stage for six songs in a row. Kate didn’t give a fig whether she looked silly dancing all alone, she just let the music carry her away on silver wings.

Sometimes, when she’s in the right frame of mind, she can look at Leon as a man, rather than her friend, or a fellow musician, or the protective older brother she’s always wanted. He doesn’t look at her like a woman, though. Whether it’s because of her colour, her sheltered upbringing, or both, Leon looks at Kate like she’s his kid sister: fondly, exasperatedly, proudly, but never like he wants to take her in his arms.

To tell the truth, Kate doesn’t mind all that much. She’s content with just looking. She knows she likes him, and that she thinks he’s handsome. It’s big enough for her to admit to herself that she has a little crush on him. Maybe twenty-four is too old for crushes (after all, many women are married at her age), but Kate wasn’t free to have too many of them before now. She likes just holding the feeling to herself and not being expected to do anything with it.

It’s not the way a woman is meant to feel, when a dreamboat like Leon gives her a nickname like Church Mouse. But maybe, just maybe, since she started making her own way in the world, Kate’s been too concerned with what women are supposed to feel. Maybe if she just let herself feel what she wanted to feel – if she could let herself honestly feel anything at all – she could finally end this childhood of hers that’s been going for almost twenty-five years.

Every morning and evening, Kate and Betty sit together on the street car. Kate particularly enjoys it in the evening, getting the chance to sit down beside her beloved best friend and rest her poor sore feet as the world flashes by outside the rain-spattered windows. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they’re too tired. But tonight, Kate finds herself wanting to talk.

“You know, I wish soldiers would write letters to me, the way they do to Gladys,” she admits. Kate writes to two soldiers herself. Brian is nineteen and the only boy in a family of seven, whereas Trevor is only eighteen and a doctor’s son. Even as she gave them her address, she knew she would have to look elsewhere if she wanted a grand romance. They’re nice boys, and she could tell they liked her, but all she could see in them was her own little brothers, Walt and Richie. Writing to them, there have been times when Kate has had to scratch out whole lines because she’s accidentally made reference to some shared memory or private family joke. She’s wasted a lot of notepaper that way. Still, writing to Trevor and Brian is another way that Kate is getting much better. Writing to people as Kate Andrews helps her practice _thinking_ as Kate Andrews.

Betty snorts. “I’m sure you could do better than being fantasised over by some dopey teenager who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.”

Underneath the layers of condescension, Kate senses a genuine attempt at reassurance. “Well, I suppose the two I write to are still a little young and shy. Do you know, Trevor took his baseball cards with him to basic training?”

“Trevor. That the kid with glasses who followed you around Sandy Shores like a puppy dog until you gave him your address?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Figures,” says Betty, flicking open her newspaper.

“Don’t be mean.” Kate nudges her with an elbow. “Anyhow, I don’t expect anything to come of it. I always thought I’d marry someone a little older than me.” A nasty voice in Kate’s head says, _Because you want another father to order you around and tell you what to do._ She pushes it down. That’s not the reason, and she knows it. She’s always gotten along well with people a few years older, it has nothing to do with her father. “How old are you, again?”

Betty’s eyes don’t leave her newspaper. “I turned twenty-eight in August.”

“And what kind of man do you want to marry?”

Betty gives a snort. “I think we all know that’s not happening. Not in a goddamned month of Sundays.”

Kate flinches, but senses that this is not the time to reprimand Betty for taking the Lord’s name in vain. “Why not?”

Betty studiously avoids Kate’s eyes. “Look at this, they’re showing _The Maltese Falcon_ at the Avalon this week. Gladys will flip.”

“Oh, Betty.” Kate looks sympathetically at her. She hates the idea of Betty thinking her life has passed her by, but she definitely understands. Kate felt terrifically old by the time she was twenty. Sometimes, Kate still has a tough time remembering that she’s still a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. “Don’t talk that way about yourself.”

“Why shouldn’t I? It’s true.”

“Anything can happen if you let it.” She decides now is a good time to tell Betty her momentous news. “I’ve decided I want to go on the stage.”

That makes Betty finally stop reading the paper. “You’re gonna sing onstage?”

“I think I could do it. I’ve been watching all the acts at the Sandy Shores for months now, and practising in my room.”

“I know,” says Betty.

Kate looks at her.

“Sometimes I hear you.”

“But you’re across the hallway. Oh, my gosh!” Kate claps a hand over her mouth. “Do you suppose the others do, too?”

“If they minded, they’d have spoken up by now. You know how nutty Susan is about absolute quiet.”

Kate sits for a moment, feeling simultaneously humiliated about all her neighbours overhearing her various attempts at singing like Lena Horne, and pleased that nobody, not even Susan, banged on the wall and shouted for her to put a sock in it.

Betty senses her discomfort and rescues her. “So. Kate Andrews on the stage, huh?”

“I haven’t a clue how to get started,” she confesses.

“Sure you do. I bet if you started singing right here and didn’t stop until we’d hopped off the street car, you’d have a whole line of swells begging you to play their clubs.”

“Be serious. Do you really think I could? I haven’t had any training.”

Giving a shrug, Betty says, “I already know you can sing.”

“You, and half the darn rooming house.”

“You don’t have to prove anything to me.” Betty reaches for Kate’s hand, giving it a squeeze. Kate laces their fingers gratefully, and they sit in contemplative silence.

Betty isn’t asking Kate to prove anything to her – only it’s becoming more and more apparent each day that she’s going to have to, sooner rather than later.

Kate thinks that perhaps she and Betty are more similar than people might think. Perhaps Betty even gets those hopeless feelings of wanting-to-be-close as well. Maybe she gets them around men, which is a notion so terrible it makes Kate cringe. No wonder Betty doesn’t think she’ll ever get married. Nine times out of ten, Kate gets those feelings around beautiful women, and yet it’s still taken her a lifetime to start to believe that she could be in love someday.

It’s clear Betty hasn’t quite caught up with Kate yet. That wretched newsreel of Mr Joseph’s didn’t help matters at all. Still, Kate was frankly baffled at Betty’s reaction to it. Perhaps Kate wasn’t as sympathetic as she might have been, but it just made her so uncomfortable, hearing Betty talk about wanting to be like all the other girls. Kate _likes_ that Betty is different. It has always seemed obvious to Kate that if Betty wanted to, she could have her pick of men. She just doesn’t want to, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Kate thought the newsreel was a bit silly, but no more wildly implausible or insulting than, say, a newsreel about Kate staying in bed on a Sunday morning instead of going to church. She certainly could have a long lie-in, most of the rooming house women do, but it’s not what she wants for herself.

Betty didn’t seem to see it that way. She thought she’d been made a fool of. She shoved Mr Joseph in front of everyone, stormed out and went home ill. That’s what Mrs Corbett told Gladys, Kate and Edith when they tried to fan out and find her. Only when Kate arrived back at the rooming house, it turned out Betty hadn’t been ill after all, just horribly, horribly embarrassed. Kate didn’t understand it one bit, how Betty could be so discouraged by a buffoon like that Mr Joseph poking fun at her.

The Mr Josephs of the world shouldn’t matter to Betty, not when people like Kate, Gladys, Mrs Corbett, all the rooming house women and everyone on Blue Shift think she’s wonderful. How wonderful, though, Kate has yet to effectively communicate. All the time, she finds herself just wanting to shout, _“Don’t you see that I love you? Don’t you see that the whole darned world would love you if you just let it? Doesn’t the way I see you count for anything?”_

But she can’t. The only way she’s been able to let her feelings out for years now is to sing them. _Just fancy that,_ she thinks dourly. _I could sing to a whole room of people, but I can’t tell my best friend how much she means to me._

All at once, Kate gets an idea.

One day soon, Kate will sing with a band. She’ll sing with _Leon’s_ band. She will get up on stage and sing her heart out, and when she reaches a line about love, how fine it is, how it makes your life better, she will find Betty’s face in the crowd (because Betty will be there, no doubt about it). Kate will smile and raise her eyebrows a fraction, so Betty can see. Kate will look at Betty and think, _Yes, you, this is about you!_ as hard as she possibly can. The music will let her feel it as much as anyone ever did. The feeling will shine out of her and fill up the whole room, and Betty will know how much Kate loves her.

“What’re you smiling about?”

Once upon a time, Kate might have given a start and flushed crimson. Now, Kate’s grin only grows wider. “Secrets.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Secrets and plans.”

“You’re being very mysterious.”

“Well, it’ll all come out before too long. You wait,” she says, her mind filled with dazzling images she knows are going to come true. Sitting here on the street car, next to Betty, she is finally Kate Andrews, fully realised (or on the way to it, at least). She is a working woman with talents, friends, a future and glorious plans. She loves someone. She’s going to tell them so, somehow. It seems there are more things in this world that could come true for Kate than anyone could have ever thought possible. She is not blind any more. “You just wait,” Kate Andrews says, and dreams her dreams.


End file.
